Christian Mira - Böcker

Chaos Theory is a synonym for dynamical systems theory, a branch of mathematics. Dynamical systems come in three flavors: flows (continuous dynamical systems), cascades (discrete, reversible, dynamical systems), and semi-cascades (discrete, irreversible, dynamical systems). Flows and semi-cascades are the classical systems iuntroduced by Poincare a centry ago, and are the subject of the extensively illustrated book: "Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior," Addison-Wesley 1992 authored by Ralph Abraham and Shaw. Semi- cascades, also know as iterated function systems, are a recent innovation, and have been well-studied only in one dimension (the simplest case) since about 1950. The two-dimensional case is the current frontier of research. And from the computer graphcis of the leading researcher come astonishing views of the new landscape, such as the Julia and Mandelbrot sets in the beautiful books by Heinz-Otto Peigen and his co-workers. Now, the new theory of critical curves developed byMira and his students and Toulouse provide a unique opportunity to explain the basic concepts of the theory of chaos and bifurcations for discete dynamical systems in two-dimensions. The materials in the book and on the accompanying disc are not solely developed only with the researcher and professional in mind, but also with consideration for the student. The book is replete with some 100 computer graphics to illustrate the material, and the CD-ROM contains full-color animations that are tied directly into the subject matter of the book, itself. In addition, much of this material has also been class-tested by the authors. The cross-platform CD also contains a software program called ENDO, which enables users to create their own 2-D imagery with X-Windows. Maple scripts are provided which give the reader the option of working directly with the code from which the graphcs in the book were

The main topics of this proceedings stress the interactions between the theory of functional equations and the theory of dynamical systems. A total of 38 invited lectures are included.

The main theme of the ECIT conferences is Iteration Theory, on the borderline between Dynamics and Functional Equations. The aim is to foster symbiosis between mainstream dynamics and iteration theory treated in the style of functional equations theory. The following topics are focused: turbulence and iteration, characterization of chaos, kneading theory, symbolic dynamics, bifurcation, periods of maps, topological dynamics, discrete retarded dynamical systems, cellular automata as dynamical systems, iterative roots of formal power series, iterative roots of polynomials, phantom iterative roots, iterative groups and semigroups, families of commuting functions, algebraic aspects of iteration theory and functional equations.

This book is essentially devoted to complex properties (Phase plane structure and bifurcations) of two-dimensional noninvertible maps, i.e. maps having either a non-unique inverse, or no real inverse, according to the plane point. They constitute models of sets of discrete dynamical systems encountered in Engineering (Control, Signal Processing, Electronics), Physics, Economics, Life Sciences. Compared to the studies made in the one-dimensional case, the two-dimensional situation remained a long time in an underdeveloped state. It is only since these last years that the interest for this research has increased. Therefore the book purpose is to give a global presentation of a matter, available till now only in a partial form. Fundamental notions and tools (such as “critical manifolds”), as the most part of results, are accompanied by many examples and figures.

Iteration theory has its roots in the operation of substituting functions into itself. This has led to questions like that of the behaviour of functions by repeating this substitution and when the number of iterations tends to infinity. The terms "orbit" and "chaos" appropriately describe this behaviour. Dynamical systems and the theory of functional equations play important roles in this field.